Website Offered Gun Owners Shooting Range Targets Of Trayvon Martin

An unidentified individual from Virginia is hoping to cash in on the tragic death of Trayvon Martin by selling gun range targets meant to resemble him.

While the targets don’t feature a photo of Martin, they do depict a silhouette of a hoodie clutching a can of iced tea and a pack of Skittles hanging out of the pocket, details pulled directly from the descriptions of Trayvon Martin on the night of February 26, when he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman.

According to a local news station in Orlando, the seller of the targets readily admits he’s hoping to make a profit over the tragic shooting of a teenager:

In an email exchange with reporter Mike DeForest, the seller wrote, “My main motivation was to make money off the controversy.”

The seller would not disclose how many paper targets had been made, but said in an email, “The response is overwhelming. I sold out in 2 days.”

Some of those targets were sold to two Florida gun dealers, according to the seller.

The listing, which appeared to have been posted on the online gun outlet store gunbroker.com, has been removed, although as of publication the Google Cache of the page is still available. For $8 plus shipping, anyone could purchase a 10-pack of the paper targets.

Mark O’Mara, the lawyer for Trayvon’s killer George Zimmerman, strongly rebuked the targets, calling it “hate-mongering.”

Gun owners, even those who believe George Zimmerman is innocent, were quick to criticize the targets and the person behind them. “Even though I fully believe Zimmerman was justified in shooting, Trayvon was still a human being and does not deserve that kind of disrespect in death,” one member of the firearm owners association told the Orlando station.